


pauses

by thekitchensnk



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Difficulties processing grief, F/M, Force Visions, Grief/Mourning, Han Solo's A+ Parenting, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, References to Depression, Rights for Han Solo, TRoS Spoilers, the time and space for grief that TROS never gave us
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21976024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekitchensnk/pseuds/thekitchensnk
Summary: + + + TROS spoilers + + +When she returns to the Falcon later that night, she has to bandage her bloody knuckles. She takes lengths of old scraps of fabric, ever practical, and has to use her teeth to keep them tight. It is a task best suited for two, but what task isn’t?She knots the bandages tight enough to make her fingers ache (-his hand would be large in hers. If they were to intertwine their fingers, maybe hers would ache slightly because-) and within minutes, there are red spots bleeding through.In the aftermath, she travels.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 15
Kudos: 82





	pauses

Somewhere, between the hesitant trembling of his fingertips-

In the spaces between his honest, exposing words-

Somewhere, between ‘ _Oh, you do,’_ and ‘ _You’ll stand with me,”_ -

In the softness of his eyes meeting hers-

Somewhere, between the moment when he ruined it all, amidst smoke and fire with the dark void of space all about them- and the moment when he came running back to her, no thought for his own safety in his head, with only a blaster to his name and fear in his heart-

Somewhere-

* * *

  
She travels.

Finn’s eyes are dark and full of concern when she goes, and his hand grabs for hers as she walks right past him. He wants her to look at him, wants her to look him in the eye, wants to know that she’ll be _okay_. It is everything that she loves about him, everything that she adores, but everything that she cannot bear to see right now.

She smiles a tight, strained smile, and ducks her head, and it hurts her twice over to know that she can’t give him the performance that would give him peace of mind.

To tell him the truth is unthinkable.

She has spent too much time alone in the desert, where self-reliance had meant the difference between life or death, to feel comfortable with others seeing her wounds.

( _You know the truth_ , he had said once, baring her wounds so easily _,_ opening her up, his voice so gentle that it had hurt. _Say it. Say it._ )

She sees the worry in the line of Finn’s shoulders, in the way that he holds himself stiff when he holds her tight, but he lets her go anyway, because he is a better friend than she deserves right now.

Poe claps her back with a solid thud after they embrace.

She is not sure how much he sees when he says, “Be careful out there, Rey. Come back as soon as you can.” He pauses. “Look out for each other while you’re out there, buddy.” The last comment is for BB-8, who chirrups and whirrs with such responsibility and self-importance that it would have made her laugh in different times. Poe crouches down and adjusts BB-8’s antenna, and he grins warmly and bumps his head against BB-8’s before getting up to go, giving her one last jaunty wave before he does.

He is an infuriating man, Poe Dameron, but a good one.

Rose is quiet, quieter than Finn, but her gaze is solemn and compassionate, and Rey wants to turn away and hide, to run, to cower, because she would suffer anything before she suffered understanding.

(In hushed voices, Finn had told her of how he’d come to meet Rose, about the failed bombing campaign Poe had led, about an asteroid where two little girls had grown up, had been forced into the mines with small and flexible bodies to help extract smelt, about a home where they had been shelled almost to death.

There had been a woman called Paige Tico. She had been brave and noble and good, and she had- )

But Rose pulls her into a hug anyway, and Rey can only swallow down her emotion.

And then there’s one.

And Chewie-

She cannot look Chewie in the eye.

\---

  
The sun is low in the sky when she touches down on Takodana, and the falling light seeps through the eaves of the trees in violent oranges and dying purples.

She is still pretending that everything is fine when she meets with Maz, who has taken up the challenge of rebuilding her old castle from shattered rubble a thousand years old, laser-blasted and wrecked though it is.

“Rey!” the woman cheers loudly when she sees her, and the joy in her voice is enough to bring a tired, half-smile to Rey’s face.

Maz puts her to work, and she stays for three weeks. She has always been a hard-worker, starvation and desperation being the keenest teacher of discipline, and it turns out that a Jedi can clear rubble ten times as quickly as a construction team.

She can’t lay masonry to save her life though.

It is boring, repetitive work, but strenuous, especially when she forgoes using the force. She sleeps on a wooden palette each night, never more than four hours (which is _fine_ , she tells herself. She is tough. On Jakku, when the sandstorms had swept out of the Goazon Badlands, the roar of the wind and the sand could stop her sleep for days. She is fine. She is fine), and best of all, her brain is too fogged to think.

There are days when her movements are less than sure, when her concentration lapses and she slips and rocks suddenly drop from out of the air.

On one such occasion, when her eyes drift to the forest, a Changrian advising her of the best way to clear the area has to leap out of the way to avoid falling detritus half the size of Rey herself. It is pure chance that he is quick enough. When the rock falls, it lands scant inches away from his head. When Maz catches her gaze then, worry in her eyes, Rey keeps her eyes low, apologises, and heads off to her tent before Maz can say a word, some unnameable feeling bubbling in her chest.

But she is tough, and so she endures

That night, she dreams.

Han is standing next to her, as gruff and warm as he was when he still lived. He stands so close that were this real life, she would be able to feel the heat of him. There is something of the smell of him in the dream, of spacedust, of oil, of the warmth of the Falcon. His hands are lined - they are old hands - and in them he holds a blaster, as he had when everything was still new, so long ago.

He is talking, but she cannot hear him. She looks up at him, a sad smile on her face, and tries to tell him as much.

When he realises, he shakes his head ruefully at her and he runs one of those hands through his hair in frustration.

She had known him for so little time, and yet the gesture is so familiar that it sends her heart shooting up into her throat.

They had fit together so well so quickly, she and Han. He had been self-conscious, back then, but he had offered out his arms to welcome her anyway, had offered her a job and a place to live. Her vision blurs suddenly, and she reaches out, longing in every inch of her arm.

But he shakes his head regretfully, his eyes sad, and he turns and begins to walk into distance.

He is soon swallowed up in the white and she is alone again.

She turns her head left, right, to look into the distance behind her, and it is only when she returns to her original position that she sees it - a shambling, lurching figure advancing out on the horizon.

She sees it first out of the corner of her eye, and she wheels around to face it, her breath coming quick. There is a quality to those movements that she recognises, a powerful, bestial surge in the limbs, and her heart beats wildly, all of a sudden, though she could not say why.

At first it is helmeted and shrouded, bearing down on her thick and fast. Takodana is a haunted place for her. A man she had thought a monster had once hunted her through its woods. For a moment she feels a residual, long-buried flash of fear.

She screws up her eyes and breaths through her nose for courage.

When she opens her eyes again, it is him.

Not hooded, nothing covering his face – _him_.

He is battered and bruised and broken, and suddenly there is no white, but rather dark, thunderous grey-black. She is kneeling, he is half-lying, and his hands, his hands like bear paws are smoothing her hair, are cupping her face, are filled with love.

He is smiling and his smile is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen, so soft and gentle and tender.

This is the last time he will ever smile, and it is for her.

His hand is so warm and she leans into it, her heart singing, her lips already missing his.

When his eyes go blank she can’t pinpoint when it is that the life goes out of them, when it is they stopped seeing her.

(She hadn’t known to look for that, had still been drunk on that smile, on his warmth, on his presence. And now she will never know the precise moment when he- when he d- because she hadn’t known to look for it.)

His limbs go slack and she-

She wakes.

She leaves the next day.  
  
\---

She goes to Pasaana first, trying to find the child who gifted her the necklace that he had ripped from her, but leaves almost the moment she touches down, haunted by the memory of lightning crackling underneath her fingers and the scream of the transporter as it came crashing down.

She stays a while on Chandrila. It is a beautiful planet, everything calm and tame and mild. There are no starving children there, she thinks, no whips to beat people into line, as had been the norm on Jakku. Leia had once told her that it had, for a time, been-

Her heart stutters at the thought of Leia.

Leia - so proud, so regal, so soft and firm and brilliant, more brilliant than almost anyone Rey had ever met, Leia, with that knowing sparkle always in her eye.

Leia, who had done the job Luke had not been capable of doing, who had patiently sat with Rey month after month, teaching her to make the best use her power when no one else had; Leia, who had sat with her head bent close to Rey’s and _listened._

(But that wasn’t true at all. _You need a teacher_ , he had pressed a lifetime ago. _I can show you the ways of the force._ Knowing what she knew now, she knows that he would have been a gentle teacher, that, in another world, she might have blossomed under his attention. _Would_ have blossomed under his attention.)

Leia had once told her that Chandrila had, for a time, been the capital of the New Republic, before the capital had moved to Hosnian Prime. She had lived here for a short span of her life and had loved the planet for its culture, its democratic spirit. It hadn’t been Alderaan, because no place could ever take the place of Alderaan in her heart, but it had been a new home, and Leia had been happy here.

Rey looks up from the park bench where she is sitting. She had picked up a freshly baked spice cake from the baker on the corner of the park on her morning walk. It is still warm in her hands, moist and fragrant with the sweet spices from which Chandrila had grown rich trading. A thin sheen of butter coats the paper bag in which she had carried it.

It should taste divine.

It tastes like ash.

How had Leia borne it? Her parents first, her planet, and then her husband, her child, her best friend, her brother?

How had Leia managed to keep going when _she_ can barely keep herself from breaking apart?

How had Leia kept going, day after day, pretending to be okay?

Out in the park, children play, and the air is thick with the shrieks and bubbling of their laughter. BB-8 rolls up to them, and his beeps and squeaks are as loud as their whoops of excitement as they run after him.

She can barely stand it.

Rey exhales, and then she quickly stuffs the rest of spice cake into her mouth, chewing fiercely, ferociously. She licks the butter from off her fingers, and scrapes the inside of the bag for scraps with them before doing it again. Only after every crumb is gone does she throw the crumpled bag away.

\---

He had been born on Chandrila. He had grown up here.

Chandrila is a beautiful planet, everything calm and tame and mild. The sea rolls softly; the children play.

Knowing him as she had in the end, she could understand how his soul had carried something of the place with it, though she never would have thought it back at the beginning.

She could understand now how he could have touched her so softly, how his voice could have caught in his throat when he said her name, how he could have had the stars in his eyes. It makes sense now, that he had been born on a planet like this.

Had he played in that park on childish playdates Leia had arranged for him? Had he laughed and shrieked and ran about on chubby legs, like those children did?

He would have been such an awkward little thing at that age. All ears; all smiles. She knows it in her gut that he would have been beautiful.

Would-

She crushes the thought as soon as she thinks it, her eyes hot and her teeth gritting together. She is strong. She is tough.

(She is breaking apart).

\---

(Would their child have played like that too?)

\---

She has 12 messages waiting for her on the Falcon when she gets back from Chandrila.

She pretends that the speed with which she dismisses them is normal. It’s normal for people to fastforward through their messages when there are so many, she thinks defensively. It doesn’t make a difference that in a different time, she would have hoarded those messages like hidden treasures and never once thought of deleting them.

“Report-“. Poe. “Rey, I’ve been where you are now. If you want to ta-“. Rose. “Rey-“. Chewie.

“You’re not alone.”

Finn.

The wrong words, though he’d have no way of knowing that, and she cannot possibly blame him for not knowing, not when she has told him nothing.

For a moment, though, she forgets and she rages. The force resonates within her in dark, dissonant ways, like strings plucked out of harmony, like a sudden clatter breaks the silence. The walls of the Falcon creek and shake and these are walls built to withstand the pressure of space.

 _Dyad_ , she wants to spit _, we were a dyad, Finn. I don’t even know what that **means** , just that now that he’s gone, half of me seems to be gone as well, and I’m not sure it’s coming back. His body must have been broken and his bones must have been smashed to bits, but he crawled to me and pulled me back here and he smiled, Finn, he smiled at me and I’m never going to be able to ask him why._

The tears pool in her eyes, and she has to tilt her head up to the ceiling to stop them falling. Water is precious. Water is vital. Water can never be spilled for frivolous purposes. She learnt those lessons early on Jakku.

_I **am** alone._

Closing her eyes and inhaling a deep, shuddering breath, she feels shame twist in her belly. Finn deserves better than this, she thinks lowly. He doesn’t deserve this.

But it could have been worse. She could have done this in front of him, where she might actually have said those things.

She exhales.

Blinking, so as not to lose her tears, she sets the co-ordinates for Naboo.

\---

On the Falcon, there is a room which must once have been his room. A room which _would_ have been his again, had he not-

Had he not-

She had spent weeks avoiding it, this one small space which had once been as normal for her to enter as any other part of the ship which had become her home. She had gone in once, pale-faced, and had done what she had needed to do.

On the bunk, in the corner, she had placed a large, black shirt. She had folded it herself, her hands trembling. She had smoothed out the creases gently, had caressed the fabric softly, and had placed it on the pillow.

Patches of that shirt were still thick and inflexible with blood stains.

When she had picked it up for the first time, back then, it had still carried the warmth of him. She had bunched her fists up in it as she walked back to Luke’s old X-Wing, had clenched her hands in it until her knuckles went white and her fingers ached. She had not let go of it even to pilot, had held it in her hands around the controls until she saw Finn and Poe through the X-Wing’s murky windshield.

She had not been able to hold on to him; he had slipped through her fingers like air, and all of a sudden her hands had been incapable of letting go of all that had remained of him.

There is one night, and one night only, where she braves the room again.

She treads over to the bunk softly, her feet cold and bare on the floor’s metal grating. Her buns are loose and the shadows under her eyes are bruise-black and dark. Her heart is raw, feels half-ripped away, like it has been cut with a rusted edge, like she can’t quite tell where the edge of her soul lies anymore. There is so much guilt and grief and love inside her.

She curls up on that bunk, her knees up to her chest, and she rests her face on his shirt. It presses roughly against her cheek.

All she knows is that she has to try.

She inhales shakily.

“Be with me,” she whispers.

The room is so dark, so small.

“Be with me.”

It smells like metal, that shirt. Weeks later, and it still smells of his blood, and of him.

“Be with me.” Her voice breaks and her face crumples, but she keeps going.

When she had surfaced from the darkness and found herself held tightly in his arms, tears had been lighting in his eyes and she had not understood why.

“Be with me,” she urges, her shoulders beginning to shake.

She had seen them beginning to pool, had seen his eyes desperately glance over every inch of her face, but her heart had been singing because it had finally gotten what it had always wanted. He had done what no one else had ever done for her; he had come back.

His lips had been red and plump and had looked so soft, and she had hesitated at first, had not known how to go about doing what it was that she wanted to do.

And then, all in a rush, courage had overcome her, and she had buried her hands into his thick, black hair, and she had kissed him.

When he had moved to breath, the smile on his face had been brighter than the Jakku sun, sweeter than her first smell of rainfall, more beautiful than the flow of the Force through the universe.

It was only later that she came to realise why the beginnings of tears had shone in his eyes, why that smile had been so brilliant.

“Be with me,” she begs. “Ben,” she sobs. The tears do not fall, but they are there.

His eyes had shone with tears because he had _known_. He had _known_ that he had only seconds left, and he had not wanted to leave her.

His smile had been bright because he had loved her and he knew it had been worth it, to give up everything, to die to bring her back.

She tries all night.

He does not come back

\---

On Naboo, she plays a game. She knows it is not healthy, but she cannot stop herself.

She imagines a hand in hers as she walks through the sunlit streets of Theed, imagines dark eyes narrowing next to her to take in the turquoise domes and the slender towers of the city.

 _My grandmother was from Naboo_ , he’d tell her earnestly. _Padme Naberrie_ \- _an amazing woman_. Maybe he’d move his hands passionately in the air as he talked; maybe he would be like her, made lazy by the buzz in the street and the bright sea air. _She was elected queen when she was only fourteen. She saw Naboo through trade blockades and a planetary occupation. I wish I could have known her._

His hand would be large in hers. If they were to intertwine their fingers, maybe hers would ache slightly because of the size of his.

She would hide a smile to see him so enthusiastic.

 _So wait a moment_ , she would say, caught up in mischief. _Are you telling me that you’re royalty **twice** over?_

Maybe his ears would go start to go pink with embarrassment. Maybe he would run a self-conscious hand through his hair, like Han had done. Maybe he would act nonchalant, well used by now to the privileges he was born into.

In any case, she would tease him regardless, her eyes sparkling. Maybe she would sweep down low into a bow, and say _Well, then… ‘Your majesty’,_ grinning up at him.

Maybe he would wind one thick arm about her waist to pull her in closer, would bend his head to hers, would leave her staring up at him with suddenly wide eyes and parted lips; her breathing would go shallow, her heart would begin to race. Head tilted up, she would see his eyes darken, his pupils go larger, see him bite at his lip.

 _You’re teasing me_ , he would murmur lowly, and with a sudden jolt, she would hear the surprise and delight in his voice. _You never called my mother that._

 _Yes,_ she would inform him breathlessly. _I am teasing you. Well done._

He would press a small kiss to her lips, and then his own would twitch upwards slightly. _It’s rude to mock royalty,_ he would say.

 _It’s rude to mock **anyone** , Ben, _she would reply with a snort.

_It’s never stopped you before._

And on they would walk hand in hand through Theed’s slow-moving crowds, with no particular destination in mind, slow and easy smiles on their faces. Without thinking, he would raise their intertwined hands to his lips, and he would press a small kiss to the back of her hand.

When she reaches the verdant, shining lake country outside of Theed, she imagines her comeuppance.

He would move powerfully through the water, she thinks, like he had been born to live the life aquatic, and she would doggy paddle near the shore, wary of the open water.

 _Do you trust me?_ he might ask quietly, playfulness dancing in his eyes.

She would wheel around quickly and stumble on the rocky bed of the lake, a hurt look in her eyes. _You know I do,_ she would say fiercely.

Something in his eyes would soften, would resemble the way he had looked the day he had-

When he had-

 _I know you do,_ he would echo back softly. _Come here. I was going to dunk you in the water, but let’s try something different._

Curious and determined, she would paddle clumsily out to his open arms, and clutch nervously at them, uneasy in the deep water.

 _Stand on my thighs_ , he would say.

She would bite her lip and look up suspiciously at him. _What is this scheme?_

_Stand on my knees, Rey._

His chest would be broad and she would have to splay her hands across his shoulders to get the purchase to stand. Her legs would wobble to support her weight on such an uncertain surface. She would stand flush against him, her chest pressed up against his, clinging to him for fear that she might fall.

And when she felt something hard and insistent between his legs, the tips of his ears would glow pink and a giddy feeling would bubble up in her chest.

 _Enjoying this?_ She might say, covering the new mix of delight and nerves in her belly with false bravado.

His head would fall backwards for a second, and that beatific smile would cross his face, the smile which said that he thought he was the luckiest man in all creation, so close in nature to the one that he had worn before he-

Before he-

_No._

He would give a quiet laugh of disbelief that he could be so fortunate to find himself here with her, like this. _Can’t you tell? Of course I am._ He would say. _Ignore it though. Stand up._

And she would stand on Ben’s knees, Ben’s hands holding hers to keep her balanced. She would marvel at his strength, as she always had.

 _What is your sinister plan?_ she would ask again.

_I’m going to throw you in._

She would try to turn around accusatorily, and would begin to lose her balance, but he would steady her. _I thought you said you **weren’t**_ _going to dunk me!_

He would hum. _I’m not going to dunk you. I’m going to throw you in. It’s different._

_Ben!_

She would not be able to see his eyes, but she is sure there would be humour dancing in them.

 _Rey_ , he would reply, gently mocking.

He would pause, and the pad of his thumb would stroke the palm of her hands where he kept her rooted. _It’s fun, I promise - once you get over the fear, at least_. Maybe he would pause, maybe he wouldn’t. _My father used to do this to me when we lived on Chandrila. Though he used to dunk me more often. He thought it was funny._

It is exactly the sort of thing she could imagine Han doing.

 _I’m not scared_ , she would lie boldly.

 _You can always say no to me, Rey_ , he would say earnestly. _Always._

_Well, I’m not going to. I’m not scared. Throw me in, then, if you think it’s so fun._

He would press a kiss to her leg, and she would feel the smile on her skin.

And then she would be flying, soaring through the air with a panicked yelp, the cool air having scarce time to raise goosebumps on her skin before she dropped bodily through the still clear waters of the lake.

By the time she surfaced, he would be there, his dark hair plastered to his face with the water. He would have raced after her, to make sure that she was alright, because of course he would have.

She would surface with exuberant belly laughs, the water splashing like a sparkling arc of diamonds caught in the fresh, pure Naboo sunlight.

She would reach for him, would pull him in tight.

 _Do it again,_ she would demand.

And he would.

He would have done anything for her.

\-----

But it is nothing more than a game.

She sits on the shore of the lake and watches the sun set over the island called Varykino by the Naboo. The lake waters are calm; if she looks closely, she can see the beginnings of night-violet mirrored in its surface.

Soon, there will be a dark pattern of stars caught in its gentle swell. The stars will pull and dance and shine in the water, the water animated by the moon, the stars held in place by the force of gravity created by each other, the dualistic movements of the heavens in plain sight.

But Rey –

Rey is alone.

\-----

Varykino is not a place for her, with its beautiful domes and sloping terracotta roofs, the seat of the Naberrie family. She can play as much as she’d like and dream beautiful dreams of sitting on its balconies, winding her fingers through Ben’s hair, but it will never be real, could never be real for her. The force of history is too strong. _She_ of all people has no claim to anything there.

Few people she meets talk about the lake estate which neighbours it, a crumbling old mansion which once must have been a handsome, stately retreat, all masculine porticos and pillars.

 _Convergence_ is its name; the place where paths meet, the place where two things become the same.

It had belonged to her famil-

_No._

It had belonged to the Palpatines.

What did it mean, that these two houses had been built so close together?

Had her grandfather sat here on the lakeside and watched beautiful Padme with her chestnut hair, so little distance away, and known what was in store for her? Had he manipulated her like he’d manipulated Ben, put the fish-hooks in her mind and wrenched it apart?

Was it intentional? Had it been pre-ordained, that Padme Naberrie would love Anakin Skywalker, that Leia would find and love Han, that she would lo-

_No._

Had they had no choice in the matter? Had she been a puppet on a string, pulled and pushed made to dance by her grandfather? And Ben too?

Had it been inevitable then, that Ben would give his life for hers that fatal night? Had he been doomed from the moment of his birth? Had they both?

Had there been _no_ way to save Ben Solo?

Her lightsaber is in her hand before she knows it and an animalistic howl bursts from between her teeth. She swings it as she had once heard he had been prone to doing, in rage, in loathing, but in love too.

When she extinguishes the blade, she sinks to the ground, and she beats at the floor until her fists are bloody, blind to the wrack and ruin all around her. She imagines that with every strike, she destroys a little bit more of her grandfather’s legacy and it gives her a venomous thrill which is beyond pleasure.

 _Never_ , she thinks viciously _, never, never, never. That will **never** be my name_. _I’d rather die a nobody a thousand times over before I took that name, for all the harm that man did to Leia, Ben and Han – for all the hurt he brought to the galaxy._

She is thrumming with it, the rage, is incoherent with it.

_How dare you take him from me. How **dare** you take him from me._

A cracking sound splits the air, and for a moment, she is almost too angry to pay it attention. It is good fortune that she does.

Convergence is falling apart, the power of her anger ripping through the force, pulling it to pieces.

 _Good_ , she spits. _They should salt the earth so that nothing so evil can ever take root here again._

With a shove of her hand, the debris shoots away from her body. The floor shakes. The walls begin to collapse.

She stalks off into the night, furious and wretched and heartsore.

\----

When she returns to the Falcon later that night, she has to bandage her bloody knuckles. She takes lengths of old scraps of fabric, ever practical, and has to use her teeth to keep them tight. It is a task best suited for two, but what task isn’t? She knots the bandages tight enough to make her fingers ache (- _his hand would be large in hers. If they were to intertwine their fingers, maybe hers would ache slightly because-_ ) and within minutes, there are red spots bleeding through.

Rey sits in the pilot’s seat. Her head is in her brutalised hands.

A small red light blinks insistently at her.

She can only just about bring herself to raise her head and blink back at it.

 _More messages_ , she thinks dully. It is like the thought issues from a thousand miles away, like someone else is thinking it.

She deletes them.

Rising with a weariness that digs down to her bones, she makes her way to her bunk. She stops for a moment in the corridor and pauses.

The door to the room which must once have been his, where the last remnant of him lies, hangs open invitingly.

 _Just one more night_ , she begs herself, hands trembling. _I need it. One more night._

She inhales a shuddering breath, and closes her eyes.

_No._

No good has ever come to her of wanting.

She sleeps in her own bed.

\---

“Oh, so you’re listening to me now?” Han grumps.

She looks up, surprised. “Han?”

“How are you keeping? Doing well? Getting into fights with people twice your size?” he says indicating her knuckles, and part of him sounds hopeful, the beginnings of an eager smile curling at the corner of his mouth, like he could do with some entertainment.

“I’m dreaming,” Rey realises.

A few days before, she had taken out some couplings from below the cockpit of the Falcon, which had been beginning to warp and flex with the additional pressure which had been placed on the hull.

Han takes one into his hands and begins to clean it. He had been this way when he was alive, she realises. He had never been able to keep still, had always had half a mind on a dozen small and insignificant things which needed doing around the ship. She is beginning to get the same way. The Falcon is her home.

“Did you at least win?” he asks, exasperated.

“He’s gone, Han,” she tells him, voice trembling. She can’t bring herself to look him in the eye. “He’s gone. He di-“ she can’t get the words out; the rest is a series of silences and strangled half phrases. “For me. He did it for me.”

Han sits next to her, and stretches out his long legs, but does not look straight at her.

“I know he did, kid,” he says gently. “I know.”

She has been at breaking point for such a long time. It is the gentleness which finally does it, and it is like a bolt of lightning which cracks open an old and mighty oak tree, like the first drops of rain after a year of drought.

The tears run down her cheeks, and she lets them. Her shoulders shake with unrestrained sobs, and this time she does not try to cram them back into her mouth. She lets them go.

The hurt had been like cosmic radiation, ever-present and touching everything she did, but sidelined, forced into the background. Now it is real and true and there is no space in her for anything but the grief, the aching black pain of loss, and despite it all, the love.

“You’d have been proud of him,” she tells Han passionately. “You’d have been _so_ proud. He was so light, so full of goodness in that moment that he was luminous with it. He ran after me with nothing but a blaster. Idiot!”

“Yeah?” Han asks, encouragingly.

“Yeah,” she replies, nodding her head firmly, cheeks wet. “It was like nothing else I’ve ever seen. He was… He was so brave.”

“Of course I’m proud of him,” Han says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Can’t tell which of us three idiots he was channelling there- me, Luke or Leia.” He exhales, mulling it over. “Doing the kid a disservice, probably. The light and the courage- that was all him.”

The two sit in silence for a beat.

“Han?” She asks, her voice suddenly tremulous.

“Yeah kid?”

“He loved me, didn’t he? Ben?”

Han looks at her for a moment, his eyes soft. “Yeah,” he says finally. “Boy was head over heels in love with you. Never saw him like that with anyone else but you. He didn’t say it, but you know that, right? You’re a smart girl and he wasn’t one for subtlety, was he?”

Her voice hitches. “He died for me. He gave me the rest of the time he had left. He- He smiled. Before he died. He smiled.”

Han nods understandingly.

“No one-“ She has to stop, to take a deep breath and compose herself before she continues. “No one has ever loved me. Not like that. And I don’t think anyone will again.” Her voice cracks and the tears start again. “But he’s left me. He’s left me behind, like they all do, and I’m so-“

Her head falls back and hits the leather headrest of the Falcon’s pilot seat. The tears fall.

“I’m so lost. He’s gone, and he’s not coming back. It’s so hard, just to be in the world, to be the same old _Rey_ , and to smile and laugh knowing that he’s not coming back. To know that it’s my _fault_ that he’s not coming back. I can’t help but think that it must be me, that there’s something in my blood that makes them all leave.”

The look Han gives her is stern.

“Kid, I understand where you’re coming from. You’re hurting, and I get that, but you’ve got to cut it with that crap. Ben _loved_ you. It’s not your fault that he’s gone. You can’t think like that. He _chose_ to do what he did, and you’ve got to respect the choices that he made. What do you think he’d make of the way you’re treating yourself? Don’t think I haven’t noticed the little disappearing act you’ve got going on, the messages left for you on the comms system _on my own ship_. You can’t sit around blaming yourself. You can’t just run from your friends forever because you’re afraid that you don’t know how to be yourself anymore. You need them now more than ever.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Just… _Get over him_?” she says fiercely. “That’s not happening.”

“That’s not what I’m saying and you know it. Coming to terms with what’s happened is going to be work. Maybe even enough work to last a lifetime. There are going to be days when you feel like shit-“

“Every kriffing day right now,” Rey glowers at him.

“Right.” Han agrees, “But that’s my point. The grief is hard enough to bear without the guilt and the self-punishment. Do what you need to do to get by today, and the next day, and the day after that. Don’t beat yourself up any more than you need to, kid.”

Rey is silent for a moment, and her expression is mutinous, but she knows that he’s right.

“Did you know?” she asks after a pause. “About my family? Luke and Leia knew. They never told me. They knew how desperate I was for a family, and they never told me.”

“Didn’t have a clue,” he announces. “Are you happier now that you know?”

“No,” she admits begrudgingly.

“Then what are you complaining about?” he says exasperatedly.

“Things might have gone differently if I’d known before. I might have been able to sort it all out in my mind _before_ it became important. Things… Might have ended differently. Might have ended better. I wish they’d at least given me a choice in the matter.” She runs her hands through her hair. “I hate this - I hate that I have to deal with this on top of everything else in my life. I hate that his blood runs in my veins. I hate that this is who I am now, that this is who I have to be.”

Han gives her a sardonic look. “Who’s saying that?”

“What?”

“Who’s saying that you have to be _anything_?”

Rey is pulled up short. “No one is _saying_ it, but they don’t have to, do they? You don’t get to choose your blood. You don’t get to choose your name. This is what I’m stuck with for the rest of my life.”

“Bantha crap.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard what I said. Everything you just said – bantha crap.”

“I don’t remember you being this mean when you were alive, Han,” she glares.

“I didn’t get to stick around long enough, that’s all. You’d have seen it, trust me.”

“Care to enlighten me as to why I’m wrong at least?”

Han stretches back in the co-pilot seat. There is starlight in his grey hair; his face is lined.

“You ever think about the name ‘Solo’, kid?”

( _Han Solo. Leia Organa Solo. Ben Solo. Her hand in his, his head bent to hers, the brush of her lips on his, the tenderness of his eyes on hers. The belonging she had always sought, the family she had always wanted, found in Ben, with Ben. Of course she had thought of it. She had thought of nothing else for so long.)_

“What about it?” she says.

“’S not a common name on Corellia, is it?”

Realisation dawns in her eyes. “No,” she says slowly. “No it isn’t. Are you trying to say-”

The smile he gives her is rakish and delighted. “I made it up.”

“You _didn’t_.”

“Yes I did. I made it up. A name’s just a name. Doesn’t have any bearing on you unless you want it to. Who says you have to keep yours?” He scoffs. “ _Palpatine_ , yeah, right. Sure. You have a choice, kid. Make a name for yourself. Do what you want to do. Be what you want to be. Blood and a name are about as important as nerf shit.”

She looks at him, and she smiles. It is a smile of the kind she hasn’t smiled in a year, a smile that is sun-bright and tooth-white and warm as a summer’s day.

“We’ll see,” she says.

Han just crosses his arms and sinks into his chair defensively. The conversation has been entirely too sincere.

“Will I remember this in the morning?” She asks suddenly.

“Don’t know,” he grumbles. “You only just about heard me this time. Wouldn’t surprise me if I had to make a return trip to drum it all back into your head again.”

“Drum what?”

“Everything.”

“Han-“ she pauses. “Is this real? It’s just a dream, isn’t it?”

He looks offended. “’Course it’s real,” he harrumphs at her. “But it’s a dream too. You’re smart, kid- figure it out.”

She snorts at him. “Very helpful.”

They sit back, the two of them, and look at the stars from the cockpit.

The stars are an agony; the world is filled with violence, with cosmic force, pulling and pushing and burning and wrenching everything apart. Nothing in the world exists in isolation; each thing that exists exerts a gravity, a magnetism, an influence. The world out there is filled with brutality. Nothing escapes unscathed.

But for a moment, Rey looks at the stars and watches their gentle silver blinking. It shouldn’t make sense, such violence and such calm bound up in the same grand design, but it does.

The pain will return tomorrow. The pain of losing him will never go away, not for a moment she lives. But there will be moments of rest too, moments of kindness, and maybe one day that will be enough.

“Han-“ she starts.

“What is it now? Can’t a man watch the stars in peace?”

“I love him, you know? Loved him. Loved Ben.”

His eyes soften. “I know,” he says.

“Did he know, do you think?”

“The kid wasn’t blind, Rey. He knew.”

“In the morning, I’m going to be alone again,” she realises. “You’ll be gone. Leia will be gone. Ben will still be gone.”

Han’s eyes sparkle. The stars are in his eyes, that force, that cosmic light, that gentleness. His voice is quiet; it speaks universally, with a grace which goes beyond what it possessed in life.

“Kid, haven’t you learnt yet?” he says warmly.

“No one is ever truly gone.”

\---

When she wakes the next day, she has only the faintest memory of having dreamed at all. She dresses as normal, but her steps feel lighter. The grief is overwhelming - it feels like a thick, black smog hanging all around her. But this morning, she is a little brighter, a little fiercer, and so it does not weigh as heavily.

Tatooine is her final destination.

She has a job to do.

As she gets up from the pilot’s seat, she spies the red light blinking on the comms system.

 _Could have sworn that I deleted those_ , she thinks guiltily. She catches herself. _No_ , she thinks firmly _. The minute I’m done, I’m going to listen to those messages. I’m going to listen to every single one. And I’m going to reply._

On the dashboard, the couplings she had removed the day before still lay strewn and tossed aside. One looks a little cleaner than she remembers it being, a little nicer.

“Come on, BB-8,” she calls, and she walks down the gangway into the desert sun.

How strange it is that so much suffering, so much love, had been born here, on this dead and dusty planet. The air is dry, dry enough to steal the moisture in her mouth, and that is a sensation she will never forget, the way the desert will use every trick it knows to kill you. It is difficult to imagine anything being born here.

BB-8 trails behind her, but Rey strides forward with purpose.

If she imagines a large hand in hers, imagines hair as black as night in her peripheral vision, dark eyes widening at the sight of the desert, and if it helps her to do so, then that is her right.

One day, she will have to leave him behind, to live her own life.

But not yet.

_No one is ever truly gone._

It is quick work, burying the lightsabers. The desert drinks them in eagerly, devours them.

 _Anakin’s legacy_. _Luke and Leia’s work. The lightsaber that Ben held after he came back to me, and the lightsaber I held when I stood side-by-side with him._

It is the way of the desert, to erode and consume until nothing is left.

But it did not consume Rey. Nor will this. She pulls herself to her feet, as she has time and time again throughout her life, and she keeps on going.

The twin suns are sinking into the sand. The air is warm and hazy and sunburnt in shades of lurid pink and orange and red; it is the golden hour, the magic hour, the hour at which the day dies and falls into its grave, where the shadows grow longer until all the land is dark.

She is a creature built from loss, who has only ever but tasted at belonging; her parents first, Han next, Luke and then Leia, and then Ben, Ben who had been beautiful and luminous and hers.

Ben, the only one who had ever been hers.

If she could talk to him now, what would he say?

She shakes her head, knowing the futility of that line of thought.

The wind rises, a small whisper carrying with it sand from the desert dunes, and soon there will be stars.

_No one is ever truly gone._

His last smile is in the curl of the wind. The last shine of his eyes is in the twinkle of the starlight. His face and his arms and his mouth are the grains of sand, the purple of night, the kiss of the breeze. The stillness of the evening is his calm.

His body had faded, his atoms dispersed, and he had gone into everything, into the violence and the calm, into the balance of the universe.

For the space in between heartbeats, there is a touch on her hand. Her fingertips feel it, if only briefly.

It will never be enough.

It is enough for now.

“There’s been no one for so long,” an old woman says, breaking her from her reverie. “Who are you?”

Rey looks up at her, at this woman who could just as much be a phantom as real woman. “I’m Rey,” she tells her gently.

“Rey who?” the old woman asks.

Rey looks out into the distance and considers the question.

_Han Solo. Leia Organa Solo. Ben Solo. Her hand in his, his head bent to hers, the brush of her lips on his, the tenderness of his eyes on hers._

_The belonging she had always sought, the family she had always wanted, found in Ben, with Ben. Of course she had thought of it. She had thought of nothing else for so long._

_You have a choice, kid. Make a name for yourself. Do what you want to do. Be what you want to be._

“Rey Solo,” she says. “My name is Rey Solo.”

* * *

Somewhere, between the hesitant trembling of his fingertips-

In the spaces between his honest, exposing words-

Somewhere, between ‘ _Oh, you do,’_ and ‘ _You’ll stand with me,”_ -

In the softness of his eyes meeting hers-

Somewhere, between the moment when he ruined it all, amidst smoke and fire with the dark void of space all about them- and the moment when he came running back to her, no thought for his own safety in his head, with only a blaster to his name and fear in his heart-

Somewhere, in the time between meeting him and losing him-

She had loved him.

**Author's Note:**

> So few of the emotional beats in that film made sense, or were attached to groundwork established sufficiently enough that they could effectively hit their mark. The film gave no room for the characters to breathe, or even emote humanly. This is an attempt to remedy some of that.


End file.
